Royally good for reasonable price – Hyderabad Palace Restaurant

With sleek interiors and crystal chandeliers, this shiny new restaurant promised an ambience true to its name from the outside. On going in, it was pleasantly decorated, airy open space with plenty of historic photographs from my beloved hometown of Hyderabad, Deccan. But how much of the authenticity of the Hyderabadi cuisine could it bring to the table was the question. When I was invited to try their menu soon after they opened, I was excited to find out and I must say I was not disappointed!

We walked into separate seating area for families on the top floor and took a look at their menu. They have a wide selection of kebabs and other Indian dishes and of course a wide variety of Hyderabadi dishes.

We started with the Nazrana-e-shorba which is the soups. We tasted three – the chicken soup (Murgh ki tehri), the mutton shorba and the lentil soup (Ghoti Dal ka Shorba)

My top pick – The lentil soup was a delicious, comforting one that is a well loved dish for breakfast in many homes, which we call ‘meethi daal’ You might want to enjoy this with any type of bread – coming to which they have a selection of naans and tandoori rotis. I really loved the chef special ‘cheese naan’ it tasted great with the other dishes we tried too.

Next up we tried their Kebab Platter. It included the reshmi, haryali, jamuni and tandoori kebabs and my all time favorite sheekh kebabs. Succulent & Delicious!

Next were the meat dishes we had with the naan. My favorite from the few we tasted were:

‘Dum ka kheema’ is a masala rich and smoked dish of minced meat. Loved the flavor and the spice level.

‘Hari Mirch ka gosht’ which was tender meat pieces cooked in a simple green chili gravy. Loved the taste but it lacked the typical look and color which I communicated to the chef.

Now it was time for the star of the show. The Hyderabadi Biryani. Being a hyderabadi, we follow the authentic recipe and in my family we make some of the best biryani, so If you can’t make the authentic biryani well, then you’r no hyderabadi restaurant I wanna go back to. This was infact the second time I was having their biryani and I will be having on more occassions inshaAllah. It tasted just at it should and meat and rice were in the correct ratio and the perfect level of doneness. We sampled both the chicken and mutton biryanis. I am kind of always biased towards the more traditional mutton biryani, but both were commendable. Move over your favourite hyderabadi biryani joint, you can enjoy some great biryani here!

We were too full by now and just took a few bites for dessert. We tasted the ‘double ka meetha’ which is fried bread sweet also called ‘shahi tukda’ , the carrot halwa and the gulab jamoon with vanilla ice cream.

The service was satisfactory, I would say the staff looked a bit untrained and I was told by the manager that they are new to the job and they are working on improving.

What I am looking forward to? Tasting their haleem they are introducing soon and also hopefully more of the traditional dishes like the marag, lukhmis and other delicacies from my hometown.